"Not a bit," said I.
"That"s a comfort," she said, with a generous sigh of relief. "How well you"re looking!" she cried suddenly. "You"re a different man. What have you been doing to yourself?"
"I"ve grown quite alive."
"Good! Delightful! So am I. Quite alive now, thank you."
She looked it, in spite of the black outdoor costume. But there was a dash of white at her throat and some white lilies of the valley in her bosom, and a white feather in her great black hat poised with a Gainsborough swagger on the ma.s.s of her bronze hair.
"It"s the spring," she added.
"Yes," said I, "it"s the spring."
She approached me and brushed a few specks of dust from my shoulder.
"You want a new suit of clothes, Simon."
"Dear me!" said I, glancing hastily over the blue serge suit in which I had lounged at Mustapha Superieur. "I suppose I do."
It occurred to me that my wardrobe generally needed replenishing. I had been unaccustomed to think of these things, the excellent Rogers and his predecessors having done most of the thinking for me.
"I"ll go to Poole"s at once," said I.
And then it struck me, to my whimsical dismay, that in the present precarious state of my finances, especially in view of my decision to abandon political journalism in favour of I knew not what occupation, I could not afford to order clothes largely from a fashionable tailor.
"I shouldn"t have mentioned it," said Lola apologetically, "but you"re always so spick and span."
"And now I"m getting shabby!"
I threw back my head and laughed at the new and comical conception of Simon de Gex down at heel.
"Oh, not shabby!" echoed Lola.
"Yes, my dear. The days of purple and fine linen are _vorbei_. You"ll have to put up with me in a threadbare coat and frayed cuffs and ragged hems to my trousers."
Lola declared that I was talking rubbish.
"Not quite such rubbish as you may think, my dear. Shall you mind?"
"It would break my heart. But why do you talk so? You can"t be--as poor--as that?"
Her face manifested such tragic concern that I laughed. Besides, the idea of personal poverty amused me. When I gave up my political work I should only have what I had saved from my wreck--some two hundred a year--to support me until I should find some other means of livelihood.
It was enough to keep me from starvation, and the little economies I had begun to practise afforded me enjoyment. On the other hand, how folks regulated their balance-sheets so as to live on two hundred a year I had but a dim notion. In the course of our walk from Barbara"s Building to the Judds the night before I had asked Campion. He had laughed somewhat grimly.
"I don"t know. I don"t run an asylum for spendthrift plutocrats; but if you want to see how people live and bring up large families on fifteen shillings a week, I can show you heaps of examples."
This I felt would, in itself, be knowledge of the deepest interest; but it would in no way aid me to solve my own economic difficulty. I was always being brought up suddenly against the problem in some form or another, and, as I say, it caused me considerable amus.e.m.e.nt.
"I shall go on happily enough," said I, rea.s.suringly. "In the meantime let us go and see the lions and tigers."
We started. The electric brougham glided along comfortably through the sunlit streets. A feeling of physical and spiritual content stole over me. Our hands met and lingered a long time in a sympathetic clasp.
Whatever fortune held in store for me here at least I had an inalienable possession. For some time we said nothing, and when our eyes met she smiled. I think she had never felt my heart so near to hers. At last we broke the silence and talked of ordinary things. I told her of my vigil overnight and my undertaking to look after the Judds. She listened with great interest. When I had finished my tale, she said almost pa.s.sionately:
"Oh, I wish I could do something like that!"
"You?"
"Why not? I came from those people. My grandfather swept the cages in Jamrach"s down by the docks. He died of drink. He used to live in one horrible, squalid room near by. I remember my father taking me to see him when I was a little girl--we ourselves weren"t very much better off at that time. I"ve been through it," she shivered. "I know what that awful poverty is. Sometimes it seems immoral of me to live luxuriously as I do now without doing a hand"s turn to help."
"_Chacun a son metier_, my dear," said I. "There"s no need to reproach yourself."
"But I think it might be my _metier_," she replied earnestly, "if only I could learn it."
"Why haven"t you tried, then?"
"I"ve been lazy and the opportunity hasn"t come my way."
"I"ll introduce you to Campion," I said, "and doubtless he"ll be able to find something for you to do. He has made a science of the matter. I"ll take you down to see him."
"Will you?"
"Certainly," said I. There was a pause. Then an idea struck me. "I wonder, my dear Lola, whether you could apply that curious power you have over savage animals to the taming of the more brutal of humans."
"I wonder," she said thoughtfully.
"I should like to see you seize a drunken costermonger in the act of jumping on his wife by the scruff of the neck, and reduce him to such pulp that he sat up on his tail and begged."
"Oh, Simon!" she exclaimed reproachfully. "I quite thought you were serious."
"So I am, my dear," I returned quickly, "as serious as I can be."
She laughed. "Do you remember the first day you came to see me? You said that I could train any human bear to dance to whatever tune I pleased. I wonder if the same thought was at the back of your head."
"It wasn"t. It was a bad and villainous thought. I came under the impression that you were a dangerous seductress."
"And I"m not?"
Oh, that spring day, that delicious tingle in the air, that laughing impertinence of the budding trees in the park through which we were then driving, that enveloping sense of fragrance and the nearness and the dearness of her! Oh, that overcharge of vitality! I leaned my head to hers so that my lips nearly touched her ear. My voice shook.
"You"re a seductress and a witch and a sorcerer and an enchantress."
The blood rose to her dark face. She half closed her eyes.
"What else am I?" she murmured.
But, alas! I had not time to answer, for the brougham stopped at the gates of the Zoological Gardens. We both awakened from our foolishness.
My hand was on the door-handle when she checked me.